The man threw a glance back over his shoulder but must have realized his room was a dead end. The lock wouldn’t hold long against their concerted efforts.
Throwing his small bag over his shoulder, he ran for the large window at the end of the corridor. They dashed after him, but he was much closer and managed to unlatch it and swing it open before they were halfway there. Pushing his bag through the opening, he slithered through after it.
Natalie lengthened her stride, but a loud crash made Luca slide to a stop, his arm flying out to hold Natalie back as the crash of falling glass died away.
She peered over his arm at the stone on the passageway floor between them and the window, shards of glass all around it.
“Was he trying to hit us?” she asked. “He wasn’t even close.”
“No,” Luca said grimly. “He was doing that to the window.” She followed the line of his pointing finger and saw a gaping hole in the middle of the window, surrounded by jagged shards of glass still attached to the frame. “He’s making sure we can’t follow that way.”
CHAPTER 17
Luca turned and sprinted back the way they’d come, clearly expecting Natalie to follow. But he’d have to go back through the main room and then circle the whole building before he could get a clear line of sight to the fleeing man. The blackmailer could be gone by then.
Glass splintered beneath her boots as she ran in the opposite direction, across the shards now littering the corridor floor. She could at least track him through the window until Luca appeared.
But when she reached the end of the corridor, another idea struck her. She didn’t need to go through the broken pane itself. If she pulled the window all the way open, as her attacker had done, she should be able to slide out without running afoul of the shards still inside the frame.
A door opened halfway down the corridor. “What’s going on?” a sleepy voice asked.
Natalie turned to see a man peering in her direction, blinking in confusion. At least one of the gardeners had chosen to catch up on sleep rather than go out to celebrate.
“Help me!” Natalie gasped. “I need you to hold this window open while I climb through.”
The man stepped all the way into the corridor, his eyes widening in alarm. “Now, look here! You don’t want to go doing that. There’s broken glass everywhere!”
“I can see that,” Natalie cried, already turning back to see how far the blackmailer had gotten. “Now hurry! Hurry!” She said the final word so forcibly that the man rushed forward.
He took the window frame from her and held it open as far as it would stretch. She hoisted herself up on the ledge and slid carefully through the opening, shrinking herself down as much as possible and taking care not to even brush against the jagged edges of glass.
“Thank you!” she cried as she tipped out the other side, only just catching herself with her hands as her legs slid through. There had barely been enough space, but she’d made it.
“Go fetch some guards!” she called to her assistant as she leaped to her feet, her eyes already looking toward the last place she’d seen the fleeing man.
Movement at the end of a row of bare orange trees caught her eye. He was fleeing north along the far end of the rows.
She didn’t bother chasing him up the aisle of trees. She didn’t want to catch him, just keep track of his location. Running along the closer end of the rows, she kept pace with him, straining to match his speed as he flashed past the end of each row.
“Luca!” she screamed as she ran. “Over here!”
She didn’t dare look back to see if Luca was close. All her attention was on keeping track of her quarry in the moonlight and making sure he hadn’t disappeared between one row and the next.
When he did pivot, turning down one of the aisles between two rows of trees, she nearly missed it. It took her several strides to slow down and turn, and when she did, he popped out of the trees in front of her.
They dove for each other at the same time. Her attacker seemed to have realized she was temporarily alone and had decided to go on the offensive. Natalie, however, was determined to hold him until Luca arrived.
Her opponent managed to seize one of her arms, but she used her momentum to spin, pulling him around with her and breaking herself free. Twisting sideways, she clamped her arms around his knees and brought him crashing to the ground.
He swore, pushing himself into a sitting position and scrabbling for the knife at his belt. Natalie let go and scrambled backward, as if she were one of the crabs Luca had shown her on the beach.
“Lila!” Luca finally arrived, lunging the last of the distance and pressing his sword tip to the man’s throat.
Her attacker went still, hatred in his eyes as he glared up at the prince. Luca didn’t take his steely-eyed gaze from the man.
“There’s a pile of orange picking bags over there,” he said to Natalie. “If you detach one of the straps, we can use it to secure his hands.”
Natalie raced to obey, removing the strap and bringing it back.
